Auckland, Bay of Islands, Cairns, Cape Tribulation and Mission Beach

Sunday 15th March – Auckland
Arose and caught the ferry over to Devenport – the other side of the centre of Auckland. After hearing several people comment on how horrible Auckland is, I was pretty pleasantly surprised as I didn’t think it was too bad at all. Devenport itself was really nice, lots of kite surfers and even a wedding taking place overlooking the bay which made it all in all a really nice atmosphere. Walked around the viewpoints then headed back to a pub to have steak.

Monday 16th March – Auckland to the Bay of Islands
An early start this morning and a long bus ride over to the Bay of Islands but arrived at our hostel to find awesome weather and spent all afternoon lying on the beach, swimming, and playing Frisbee. Pahia is a pretty chilled out place which was a nice transition after Auckland and we just chilled out for the day. In the evening we had a communal barbeque – always a great way to meet new people.

Tuesday 17th March – Bay of Islands
Probably one of the most chilled out days ever today sailing around the islands with our skipper Glenn. There was only about 9 of us on this beautiful sail boat so lots of deck space to lounge on. I say that though but there was one particular pigeon that flew onto our boat and found it easier to literally walk over me than to walk around me. This made everyone on the boat laugh and take pictures however Glenn shooed the poor thing off the boat and after circling a few times it flew out to sea, landed on the sea and I learnt that pigeons fly out to sea to die so that saddened me. Another bird lost! The ride back to Pahia was silent and smooth and ended what was a very nice day. In the evening we all chilled out in the movie room and watched Ladder 49 – a bit crap to be honest – but I sat opposite a rather attractive young lady so whenever the film got a tad boring I would creep my eyes over to her! Headed off to bed thinking about the sea, the new girl in the tv room and of course the poor pigeon who flew out to sea to die.

Wednesday 18th March
As our bus back to Auckland wouldn’t be leaving until 3:30pm we had the day to spend at the beach so headed down to try again to top our tans before we hit the famous beaches of Australia. We got talking to a girl on the beach about where she was from – Brazil, where she had travelled, where she was going nxt, how to speak Portuguese – some all around general good chit chat. As we were both heading back to Auckland today and were both staying at the same hostel we arranged to meet at the bar for 10pm.
We arrived back in Auckland in plenty of time to prepare for the nights activities and went out for a delicious Indian where you could bring your own wine so we did just that. Got back and showered then turned up at the bar at 10:15pm – just at the same time as the lovely Renata from Brazil.
We all went down to the bar and celebrated Rich’s birthday with vodka, shots and jaiger-bombs. Then we danced the night away – Renata teaching us how to dance the Brazilian way – in other words not to dance like English men who couldn’t dance at all.

Thursday 19th March – Auckland
Rich’s actual birthday today! I bought him the best present he probably has ever received – a box of Tim Tams. I joined the others for a spot of lunch in the park accompanied by a mad homeless man talking about his feet and how everyone else would have given him some food by now. Jamie did the good deed and bought him some bread although i’m sure he wasn’t actually that greatful. We looked around at harbour then I headed back to the hostel to say goodbye to my Auckland romance and help her with her 3 bags (bigger than her) onto the airport bus – what a true gent.

To celebrate Rich’s birth the rest of us headed down into town to eat at a buzzing Mexican restaurant – the busier the better is my opinion when it comes to restaurants so this place should have been excellent...and it was pretty good to be fair. We then headed over to Auckland’s centrepiece- the skytower – a massive structure which gave really nice 360 views around the city.

Friday 20th March – Auckland to Cairns
After a night of attempted sleep – and not a bad one at that – on the sofas in the lounge of our hostel, then for a part of the 5 hour flight from Auckland to Cairns, we landed in the hot and humid city of Cairns – pretty much the gateway either down the East Coast or back home to wherever you may have come from. We arrived early in the morning and got the shuttle bus down to our hostel – Gilligans – a massive maze and resort like hostel surrounded by little coffee shops and a rather random fruit market. To be honest I didn’t think much of the hostel, it felt like a wannabe 18-30s resort in Malaga full of English people and ridiculously slow receptionists who could answer your question only with one syllable. We thought we would wander down to the beach though and take a look around the town so headed down that way and came across the lagoon – a pretty good replacement for the fact that you couldn’t swim in the sea because of the countless number of jellyfish that could quite easily give you a premature death or a large amount of pain. We spent the day dipping in and out of the pool to escape the heat and then headed back to the hostel to prepare for Rich’s 3rd (not in age) birthday celebration. This involved the obligatory bottle of wine, some beers and a pretty good live band with only two guys playing the drums and guitar but who were actually very good – far better than Gilligans we thought – i’d tell you to watch this space if I could remember their name but I can’t so I won’t! The evening resulted in a pretty souless bar and dance floor not nearly as busy as we thought it would be – a lot of locals and some average music. Still after a lot of shots we danced and lunged the night away.

Saturday 21st March - Cairns
Woke up pretty late due to yesterdays shenanigans to the sound of Sav disposing of last night’s alcohol and Rich no where to be seen – turns out he went down to the supermarket and bought some much needed milk for breakfast. Today was the day we would decide to try and book up a few tours and accommodation for the next few days and thanks to Laura we had a pretty decent idea of an itinerary and places not to miss out on. We very luckily managed to stumble across Peter Pan’s travel agents – one which had been recommended to us – so sat down with the lovely Amy and she pretty much planned our trip for us to include Cape Tribulation, the Whitsundays, Fraser Island, Byron Bay and so on. The only slight problem was that she got the calendar wrong and somehow thought it was last week and not in fact this week (if that makes sense). This meant our itinerary for Cape Tribulation was actually for the previous Sunday just gone. She convinced us it was just a typo and all would be fine, so we put our trust in her and will evidently find out what goes on in the next couple of weeks. We spent the rest of the day lounging around the lagoon again and soaking up some sun, then heading down to the Wool Shed for a decent 10 dollar meal with a drink and dessert thrown in – bargain.

Sunday 22nd March – Cairns to Cape Tribulation
Sav left early in the morning for her continued holiday on airplanes – flying to Brisbane, then Darwin and then onto Bali where finally she should see some land for at least 2 weeks. Rich and I woke up to get our bus over to Cape Tribulation where we would spend two nights exploring around from our hostel. Our guide for the journey was a small chap called Billy with what I guessed was a typical Australian sense of humour – quite dry and subtle and also pretty homophobic – the gays were the “original backpackers”. We stopped off at a river along route to go crocodile searching as North Queensland is pretty much inhabited with them. We probably passed a fair few on the way, but only managed to spot one just by the waters edge. Cue the sudden rush of photographs then pretty much back to the dock all within a total of 20 minutes or so – I was expecting slightly more to be honest. Continued our bus journey onwards and stopped off for a walk into the rainforest with our intrepid and homophobic (i’m not scared of houses) guide Billy, who taught us a bit about the bush and why trees and roots looked like they did. Onwards to our hostel – PKs - apparently the party hostel although the oversized bar was exactly that – oversized because there was only ever about 10 people there. Still there was a nice atmosphere about the place, the beer was cold, the food was very nice and served quickly and the music in the bar was very good too. We drank the night away with some jugs of XXXX, our new friends – Lee ,Vicky – a German girl who said not a lot at all, and Mke – an English guy who was neither irritating nor stand out special so suited me quite nicely, and numerous games of s***head and ring of fire. At the end of the night Rich and I took a walk down to the beach, although got as far as the track and turned around because it was far too dark and we would probably get bitten by a snake/spider/shark/bat/jellyfish/lizard/crocodile/Australian.

Monday 23rd March – Cape Tribulation
Our room contained 3 large ex army Swedish blokes so bright and early they arose and vacated the room in a swift and stealth like manner. However, I did wake up and needed the loo quite a lot but couldn’t be bothered to move. However for one reason or another I felt inspired to go for a run along the beach because the sand was hard and flat and was pretty ideal for a morning jog. I looked at my watch and it was 8am and thought this would be a perfect time before the heat arrived but alas the next time I looked at my watch it was ten to ten and far too late. Got out of bed to go and grab some breakfast at the inadequate kitchen and were forced to eat our weetabix out of a saucepan. Also saw the biggest spider ive ever seen to add to my collection – about the size of my hand, but apparently harmless. All breakfasted up we started the 4 hour road trip to get down to Emmogen Creek where there was supposedly a pretty decent water hole with no crocodiles apparently so we could swim. It was a really nice walk along the road through the rainforest surrounded by little creeks and waterholes and of course a s*** load of wildlife, probably some deadly spiders, crocodiles and almost definitely a ton of poisonous snakes – Australia has the top ten most poisonous snakes in the world, and 22 out of the top 25...We also saw the biggest lizard I’ve ever seen – about the size of a small crocodile which led us to believe it might have actually been a small crocodile and therefore its rather larger mother crocodile could be somewhere nearby, but we concluded it was too far from the water so must have been a lizard. Although we did turn around a couple of time just to make sure we weren’t being stalked. Seriously though, this lizard was over a metre in length. After just under 2 hours and some unsuccessful hitch-hiking, we arrived at the creek and made our way through the rainforest to get to the waterhole – not quite as spectacular as I would have hoped for, but still it was very refreshing to soak in the water surrounded by the hot and very humid rainforest. We stayed here for a while and ate our salami and cheese sandwiches then headed back towards PKs. On the way back to the road, we also saw the biggest bird i’ve ever seen – apart from an ostrich, but for some reason, i don’t know why, i don’t class an ostrich as a bird....just an ostrich. For whatever reason i classed this as bird, and it was big, and very random to see blocking our path – it was called a Cannoosy (i just made that up). – edit: I later found out it was called a Cassowarie.
Thankfully this time our hitch-hiking was successful so we managed to all jump in the back of a pick-up truck and cut out a large chunk of walking to get back to our hostel for the evening meal – a kangaroo schnitzel!

Tuesday 24th March – Cape Tribulation to Cairns
Woke up to meet the lovely Lee again for breakfast and we walked over to the beach and to the lookout point over the beach. It was a pleasant enough walk to go along with a pleasant enough view...but no more really. On our return we discovered why they call it a rainforest – it rained a lot. Big drops too. The bus back to Cairns picked us up just after lunch. We stopped off at Mason’s creek where we went for a swim in the river currents and jumped off a few rocks. Then we stopped off at Port Douglas, a more or less man made exclusive town based around a resort and the fact that a lot of A list celebreties spend a bit of time here. We didn’t see any alas. We did however see a shop full of wind chimes which seemed to annoy Rich quite a lot and he explained that if he worked there that one day he was likely to explode with a baseball bat and smash all the chimes.

We arrived back in Cairns and ate at the beloved Woolshed again and found out it was cheap night for drinks so we drank. Even left to go and drink a couple of bottles of cheap wine down a little side alley at a shop which was closed but still had a table and chairs laid out for us. We partied the rest of the night away.

Wednesday25th March – Cairns
I was hungovvvvver today, as was Rich. We lethargically walked down to the Greyhound terminal to book our onward buses for the next couple of weeks, then made it over to the lagoon where I feasted on some Asian grease and then we slept for about 4 hours on the grass. In the evening we went to the cinema to watch Slumdog Millionaire – excellent film. We also checked into another hostel across the road from the dreaded Gilligans and their ridiculously slow check in procedures. This hostel was called Corona Backpackers and was so much nicer.

Thursday 26th March – Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef
Today we joined the Passions of Paradise boat to have a day sailing and snorkelling around the reef. We sat at the front of the cat and by gosh it was rough. Although the waves didn’t seem that large, the boat seemed to catch them pretty well and sway and bounce all over the place. Thankfully I don’t get sea sick, and when one of the crew members walked around with brown paper bags this seemed to encourage some people to go to the back of the boat and vomit – effectively paying $100 to spend the day being sick when this could easily be done for £3.50 at a Croydon kebab shop. Away from the vomit we sat at the front of the boat enjoying the wind and sea in our faces quite literally. When we arrived at the first reef we suited up into our stinger suits to avoid the possibility of coming face to tentacle with the box jellyfish or any other jellyfish for that matter. We arrived at our first reef about 2 hours into the trip – quite spectacular to see an island in the middle of the ocean populated by a large number of sea birds, and to come face to face with one of the wonders of the world – the Great Barrier Reef. With our masks on we got a boat over to the island and then got into the water to snorkel around. We were in the water for about 1 and a half hours but I think I could have quite easily stayed in there all day. There was literally so much to see – hundreds of fish of different sizes, shapes, colours, groups. A fish is effectively a fish but seeing them in this environment you realise just how many varieties there are and how stunning some of their colours are. I even saw one throw up. I also managed to swim with a giant turtle – an amazing animal to see. It seemed so mellow and peaceful when it swam as if it was in absolutely no rush at all. Every now and then it would scoot to the surface, grab some air then slowly float back down and swim around the reef again as if it was doing exactly what I was.
We got back on the boat for some lunch then took another 15 minute sail over to the next reef – known as Paradise Reef. Again I could have spent hours here looking at everything. We saw some really big fish which i think were snapper which disappointed me because I now realise that when I ate snapper the other day for the first time, I must have only eaten the equivalent of half an arm because this fish was huge. We also saw some smaller flat fish that seemed very intrigued by us – their expressionless faces would swim up to us, scoot around for a bit and then swim off with exactly the same face as if they were trying to be subtle about it.
The journey back into Cairns took about 2 hours again and we sat at the front of the boat again get extremely wet from the crashing waves. This really made it feel like we had had a proper day at sea and increased the size of the bug I was catching about sailing.

Friday 27th March – Mission Beach
I managed to get the time wrong for the Greyhound bus this morning so had to get there at a slightly faster pace than we perhaps would have enjoyed. Arrived and met Iain – the incredibly anal bus driver who told us off for being late, even though he was running very late himself. Got on the bus however for what should have been a 2 hour drive down to Mission Beach, but due to the bus drivers Anality we had to not only stop and get something on the bus’ computer fixed (even though the bus was running fine) but then change buses completely. This meant we arrived in Mission beach about 2 hours later than planned, but as Mission Beach appears to be one of the most chilled out places, this didn’t bother us in the slightest. We were picked up by a driver from Scotty’s hostel from the bus stop, who then even drove us over to a cafe for lunch and then onto Woolworths for an afternoon shop – very good service so far. After our shop we spent the afternoon doing what you do best in a place like this – sleeping and then eating.